I don’t care how slurper you want to get, There is ZERO excuse for Mario Cristobal to have a definitively worse class than Mike Norvell and Billy Napier. None. Zero. Zilch.
Again, we are 20th in average recruit and with a class currently filled with 24 kids compared to schools “below us” like Texas (17), they’re almost assuredly going to pass us. The average recruit ranking is what I pay attention to the most.
You say we’re seeing the development in front of our eyes…you cannot be blindsided by recency bias. If we had lost to Clemson, the tune would be veryyyy different on here. Imagine if Guidry and Dawson had BETTER PLAYERS AND BETTER TALENT to work with. You don’t think we’d be a top 10 program sooner rather than later?
Luckily, WR has talent coming in. CB? Nah. DT? Nah. Linebacker? People’s feathers will be ruffled so I’ll stay out of that. QB? Pfft. We need more Bains and Mauigoa’s, and less Russell’s and Thomas’s and Dylan Days.
You mentioned portal. Norvell eats our lunch in the portal, heck he eats everyone’s. Ok…what’s the best way to grab elite portal talent? Money. Have we landed a stud, top transfer from the portal that wasn’t an OL? Deen was 95th, Kiko was 45th…our OL that won us the game on Saturday, we paid for those dudes and in turn, it’s brought us two wins imo (A&M as well). Kiko was a package deal, Deen has been very good but not elite.
We need elite talent ready to contribute. We’re not going to outbid everyone in the portal, it’s just not going to happen. You need to recruit high school better than **** near everyone, especially in-state. You’ll never convince me that being 3rd in the state is fine. That’s beta ****.
I see three, maybe four players in this class that can impact this roster next season. We need more. We have everything to sell right now, even winning on the field.